Beijing.- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi asked a delegation of MEPs on Tuesday to help the European Union (EU) adopt a “rational and objective” view of China and a “positive and correct” policy toward Beijing, amid tensions between both sides over issues such as trade or the war in Ukraine.
Wang met in Beijing with a multi-party delegation from the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs led by its chairman, the German David McAllister, according to a statement released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on its website.
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The head of Chinese diplomacy welcomed the first visit to the Asian country by a delegation from said commission and expressed his wish that the MEPs strengthen exchanges with different Chinese sectors and get to know a “real, multifaceted, and constantly developing and progressing” China.
The minister argued that China’s development represents an increase in “forces for peace,” “factors for stability,” and guarantees of prosperity, and maintained that the country provides “the greatest certainty” for world peace and development.
On the bilateral level, Wang stressed that history and reality show that China and Europe are “partners and not rivals,” a formula that Beijing has repeated in recent years in the face of the hardening of the European tone.
The Chinese foreign minister called for “avoiding the politicization of economic and trade issues” and for bilateral exchanges to be approached from a generalized security logic.
Wang also answered questions about the trade imbalance, the war in Ukraine, human rights, and artificial intelligence (AI), although the Foreign Ministry did not offer further details on the matter.
For their part, the MEPs stressed, according to the same statement, that ties between Beijing and Brussels are at a “critical juncture,” although they indicated that they oppose a “decoupling” between the Twenty-Seven and China.
“China plays a fundamental role in many important global issues, and the EU is willing to maintain fluid communication” with Beijing, they stated.
The European delegation, made up of eight MEPs, began a three-day visit to China this Tuesday with stops in Beijing and Shanghai.
The mission arrives in a week marked by new frictions between Brussels and Beijing, after the European Commission fined the Chinese platform AliExpress 550 million euros this Monday for not “effectively” combating the sale of illegal products.
The visit also comes after another delegation of MEPs, from the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, traveled to China between March and April to convey to platforms such as Shein, Temu, and AliExpress that European safety and competition rules must be complied with in digital commerce.
Brussels considers an economic relationship marked by an annual trade deficit of about 360 billion euros with China to be “unsustainable,” while Beijing rejects accusations of overcapacity and industrial subsidies.
